


getting patched up

by lebsian



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Injury Recovery, Kissing, Love Confessions, Minor Injuries, Mutual Pining, Pining, looks you directly in the eye. barry has a stutter.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:15:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27093412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lebsian/pseuds/lebsian
Summary: Twenty seconds ago, Lup hobbled into the medbay, using Taako as a crutch and covered in soot and burns. Barry, who was just trying to find where he left his old body’s skeleton from a previous experiment, was tasked with patching her up while Taako helped Magnus clean up the mess outside.He helped her onto the examination table to take the weight off her leg, which has some severe burns on it. Both arms are burned too, getting worse closer to her hands. He guesses she did some wandless evocation— or as she likes to call it: “fireball juggling” that went wrong. Too bad she chose to wear shorts and go without her jacket. Her hair is dirty and the tail ends are charred, and her face has soot on it, but it doesn’t look too bad.Shedoesn’t look too bad, and he’d tell her that if he had a single smooth bone in his body.
Relationships: Barry Bluejeans/Lup
Comments: 6
Kudos: 42





	getting patched up

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be a drabble. this ended up a multi-thousand word fic. i've gone insane in a single sunday afternoon. blupjeans made me go insane. fuck.

Twenty seconds ago, Lup hobbled into the medbay, using Taako as a crutch and covered in soot and burns. Barry, who was just trying to find where he left his old body’s skeleton from a previous experiment, was tasked with patching her up while Taako helped Magnus clean up the mess outside.

He helped her onto the examination table to take the weight off her leg, which has some severe burns on it. Both arms are burned too, getting worse closer to her hands. He guesses she did some wandless evocation— or as she likes to call it: “fireball juggling” that went wrong. Too bad she chose to wear shorts and go without her jacket. Her hair is dirty and the tail ends are charred, and her face has soot on it, but it doesn’t look too bad.  _ She _ doesn’t look too bad, and he’d tell her that if he had a single smooth bone in his body.

“Whoops,” she says with a shrug as Barry grabs the necessary materials needed to clean her up. Stuff to clean off the ashes and dirt, burn cream (that the ship keeps an ample amount of specifically for Lup Disasters™), and gauze to put over the cream. Merle’s out on some excursion with Lucretia and Davenport, so it’ll be at least a few days before he comes back to heal her magically. Honestly, Lucretia and Davenport’s absence explains the accident, they’re the most responsible ones.

“W-what happened?” Barry asks, wetting a washcloth and starting to scrub her upper arm.

“Accidental explosion, happens to the best of us.”

“W-with you around maybe,” Barry says, causing Lup to scoff indignantly.

“Rude!” she declares, “I am the best evocationist ever. It’s not my fault the dirt on this stink planet is explosive.”

Barry chuckles as he finishes wiping down her upper arm. Making his touch lighter he moves on to her forearm, and he doesn’t notice he’s gone quiet as he focuses.

“Aw, you’re so considerate,” Lup teases. Barry grins sheepishly and shrugs.

“I don’t w-w-wanna hurt you, is all.”

Lup makes a small sound that sounds between an exhale and a chuckle. “Thanks, babe.” Her voice suddenly sounds a lot more sincere.

He looks up and she’s smiling down at him. He nearly loses his breath, and manages to say, “No problem.”

He goes back to his work to avoid combusting completely. Lup says, “It’s funny, actually, how all this happened. When the explosion happened my wand just disappeared. It was behind my ear and went who-knows-where. I told Taako to get it for me but I don’t know how long it’ll take him.”

“I can help him after we’re done, if he wants help.”

“Don’t stress it babe, Mags is helping him. You can go back to your bones or whatever.”

Barry chuckles, finally cleaning up the arm. He moves to the next one and Lup stretches the clean one out, almost instantly wincing. She brings it back to her side and says, “Nope, stretching severely burned skin is a bad idea. The more you know.”

Barry chuckles again. “Just try to stay still until I get the cream on. It’ll help with dry skin too.”

“Me, sitting still? Have you met me, Barold?” she says, making him laugh a little. Nonetheless, after shuffling a little to get comfortable, she sits still. Her unburned leg bounces against the rung of the table, though.

A small lapse of silence fills the air between them, and Barry can’t quite tell if it’s awkward or comfortable or something else. He focuses on her arm either way, carefully wiping soot off the tips of her fingers before washing out the cloth in the sink.

He brings it back and starts wiping the side of her face clean. She was watching his hands before, but now she’s watching his face. His hand stills as they make eye contact. The silence is definitely something else now, but he can’t tell what it is. After a moment of silent staring, he brakes contact and goes back to cleaning, now feeling more than a little awkward. He’s intently focusing on Lup temple, so he can’t see her expression, but out of the corner of his eye, she looks a little… disappointed?

“What do you need your old skeleton for?” she asks suddenly. It takes him by surprise.

“Oh, uh, I was going to do some tests and needed b-b… I needed b-bones that weren’t, you know, still in a body. I thought I left some in here.” He adds, “You guys think it’s weird that I keep my old bodies, but it keeps me from experimenting on myself.”

Lup laughs a little. “I don’t think it’s weird.”

Barry backs away from her now-clean face. She was looking away from him, at the far wall, but looks back once there’s more distance between them. He asks, “Really?”

“Yeah. I mean, it is weird, but it makes sense, especially once you put it like that.”

He smiles before moving to her legs. Her right one is burned worse than her left, so he starts with the left. He pulls a wheely chair over to sit in and she props her foot on his thigh. Starting at the ankle, he says, “It’s not w-weird the more you think about it. It’s just recycling.”

Lup laughs at that, covering her mouth with her hand. Barry laughs along as he cleans. Lup says, “Can’t argue with that logic!”

“Tell that to Taako. He called me a… w-wh-what was it… a ‘total v-vulture’ when I tried explaining it to him.”

Lup laughs again, a little more calmed down. “Don’t worry babe, I’ll beat him up if he bullies you any more.”

Barry smiles, half to himself. “Thanks.” He finishes working on her calf and moves up to her knee.

Lup says, “Y’know, if you give me another rag I can help you with that.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that. I got it,” Barry says, shaking his head a little.

Lup shrugs, “If you insist.” She leans back, arms propper her up before she winces and remembers the burns.

“W-wait. Here,” Barry says, stopping and putting down his cloth. Lup moves her foot off him and he stands, grabbing the burn cream off the table next to her. Opening it and squeezing a little bit into his hand he says, “I’ll reapply and b-b-b… wrap it later, but this should help in the meantime.”

He rubs the stuff between his palms and when she offers a hand he takes it. He rubs both his hands around hers to spread the stuff over her burns. He’s careful not to hurt her and he stares hard at her hand to avoid making eye contact. He can tell his face is red enough.

Once it’s all rubbed in he just simply holds her hand in one of his and asks, “Okay, how’s that?”

He dares to look up at her and she’s looking at him silently, mouth ajar and what looks like a blush on her face. That could be his imagination though. She looks away and says, “Yeah! Yeah, it’s fine. Great, actually. Feels a lot better.”

“Oh, good. I’ll do the, uh, the other one, then.” Lup just nods, and Barry repeats the process with her other hand. It’s almost like a lotion, it moisturizes the skin as well as healing it. Barry’s hands come away soft as a baby’s skin. He thinks about that more than the softness of her hand despite the injury.

They fall into silence again as Barry sits back down and moves on to cleaning her other leg. Barry tries not to think about both him and Lup blushing as he held her hand, because if he thinks about it he’ll think  _ too much _ about it and that’ll get him nowhere. Gods know he’s done that too many times already, especially when Lup is concerned.

Any chance of avoiding awkward talk is thrown out the window when Lup winces and buckles forward, gritting her teeth as Barry accidentally presses too hard into her burned thigh. He moves his hands away from her leg as if she stung him, instantly blurting out apologies.

“I’m sorry, I w-w-wasn’t thinking. That was v-very stupid of me. Sorry.”

Lup holds up a hand. “No. Don’t. It’s fine. I wasn’t paying attention either.” She sucks in a breath and lets it out slowly, relaxing her muscles as she does so. She leans back and smiles sheepishly. “That just stung a  _ lot _ .”

“Sorry,” Barry says again.

“Don’t be,” Lup insists, “You obviously didn’t do it on purpose.”

Barry nods. She offers her leg again, and he lets her prop her foot on his leg as he goes back to work, now acutely aware of her pressure sensitivity. He spares a glance at her and she’s fiddling with her hands in her lap. They’re slowly and softly trailing over each other; she interlaces her fingers, holding her own hand.

It’s been a while now and Barry is realizing the mood has changed from the time when she got here. A lot quieter, softer, a little more intimate. Or maybe the injury made Lup too tired to be as talkative as she usually is. Maybe the  _ something _ hanging in the air between them, so heavy he can almost physically feel it, is all in Barry’s imagination.

“I wonder what’s taking the boys so long,” Lup says, “Kinda worried about my wand.”

“I guess how fast they’ll find it depends on how big the explosion is,” Barry says, “B-b-but we always have backups if they can’t find it.”

Lup makes an agreeing sound. “But I like my wand, it’s a good one.”

“I get that,” Barry says.

“Says the one who made a wand out of his  _ ulna _ .”

“Says the one who set fire to gunpowder dirt.”

“Says the one who wore a jeans tank top. A  _ jank jop _ .”

“Says the one who told me to w-wear it.”

“Says the two  _ flirting _ by  _ insulting each other _ .”

Barry and Lup’s heads turn in sync to Taako, who’s sauntering in with two small bits of something in his hand. Lup, defensive, says, “We weren’t—!”

“Yes you were, shut up,” Taako says. Barry says nothing and tries to keep his face from turning red at the assumption. Taako reaches Lup and hands her the sticks. “Here.”

She takes them and, yep, they’re the two halves of Lup’s broken wand. She frowns and pouts a little and says, “Aww, my good wand.”

“Don’t mess around with the stinky dirt, goofus,” Taako says, “How’re the burns?”

“They’re getting better,” Lup says, putting the wand pieces down next to her. “Once we get all the junk  _ off _ me and the burn cream  _ on _ me I’ll be fine.”

Taako hums. “We’ll get you a new wand after that’s done. Then you can help us look for Magnus’ granddad’s knife. He’ll cry if we can’t find it.”

Lup nods and Taako turns to Barry. “Speed up on the ‘fixing my twin’ thing,” he says, poking Barry in the nose before turning and leaving.

“But I don’t want a new wand,” Lup grumbles, crossing her arms. It’s dramatic and mostly for goofs, but he can tell she’s actually a little upset.

“You know… I’m p-pretty sure I still have my other ulna.”

Lup makes eye contact with him, a beat passes, and they both dissolve into laughter.

“You’re so weird, Bluejeans,” Lup says, leaning against the wall and crossing her arms. “I dig it.”

Barry chuckles a little more as he calms down. “Thanks… I guess?”

Luckily, all the soot is finally off of Lup. He stands, takes out the burn cream again, and says, “Give me your arm.”

She sticks it out and he squeezes it from the bottle directly onto her forearm. He starts working it over her whole arm and she sighs in relief. “That feels so good. I was feeling like I got sunburnt all over.”

Barry’s nervous again, remembering the atmosphere from the last time he did this. He says, “You kinda w-w-were.”

Lup chuckles at that and says, “Yeah, I guess so.”

The burn isn’t too bad beyond her elbow, but he spreads the extra cream up there just in case. He wipes his hands on his jeans and grabs the gauze next. He starts wrapping her palm and she suddenly winces, hand tensing. Barry freezes, mortified that he hurt her. “Oh, sorry. W-was that too tight?”

She nods, grimacing. “A little.”

He unwraps and rewraps it, careful to be a little looser. His face burns with embarrassment. This is the second time he’s hurt her, oh he  _ sucks _ at this. He continues wrapping the gauze around her hand in a repetitive motion, willing himself to focus on doing it right.

Something must’ve shown on his face, because Lup places her free hand over his, stilling it. “Hey.” He looks up and meets her eyes and she’s smiling sympathetically. “Don’t worry about it, I’m fine. I’m tough, y’know?” Her smile turns teasing and she says, “You couldn’t hurt me if you wanted to.”

That’s not true, because he didn’t want to hurt her and he still did, but he smiles a little regardless. She’s trying to cheer him up and he appreciates it. They hang suspended in that moment for a beat, just smiling at each other. That’s the second time this has happened too. He goes back to wrapping her hand and says, “I think even if I did hurt you Taako w-w-would hurt me just as bad.”

Lup chuckles, though it sounds a little empty. Weird. “Yeah, he’s real weird about that sometimes. Like, I can take care of myself, dingus! No need to go into ‘protective twin’ mode.”

Barry hums, nodding. He finishes wrapping the gauze and tucks the end of it into the folds so it’ll stay closed. He takes his hands off hers and she holds it out. The fingers are free but the palm is covered. It also reaches halfway up her forearm, where the burns were the worst. She wiggles her fingers a bit and turns her hand around to inspect both the front and back of the wrapping.

“Sweet, now I got a bitchin’ cast.”

Barry laughs a little. “If you w-want to think of it that way.”

“I do,” Lup says, smiling proudly. She sticks her other hand out and says, “Let’s do part two.”

Barry nods, getting the burn cream and starting to lather it onto her other arm. Lup says, “Do you think I’ll need to mummify my leg?”

Barry shakes his head. “It’s not as b-bad as your hands. Just put the cream on and reapply every so often until it’s healed. The gauze is really just to keep the stuff from rubbing off of your hands as you touch stuff.”

“Cool,” Lup says, “Though it’d be a nice early Halloween costume.”

“Yeah, if this planet does Halloween.”

“Fair. Hey, remember that cycle where Halloween was a monthly thing?”

“Oh yeah. April Halloween was w-weird to experience.”

“But really fun. I think me and Taako did the matching costume that month.”

“Right. You w-were Mario and Luigi right?”

“Yeah.” Lup laughs. “I was a great plumber.”

“I remember that. You made Magnus be P-peach.”

“No, he wanted to be Peach. He  _ rocked _ that dress.”

Barry nods in agreement. Her other hand is just about done. It’s quicker work after doing it once before. He tucks the end of the gauze away and starts to put the roll back in its little box. He stands and pushes the stool out of the way. “There, you’re done.”

“Nice,” Lup says, holding out her hands and admiring them. Her casual smile turns reminiscent. “Y’know, whenever Taako or I got hurt on the road we always used to patch each other up and I always insisted we had to kiss it better. We had an aunt that told us it was healing magic when we were real little and it stuck with me.”

The image of Barry kissing Lup’s hand enters his mind and stubbornly refuses to leave. He stutters out an “Oh, really?”

Lup nods. “Yeah.” She smirks mischievously and holds out her hand like a queen to her subject. “Try it.”

Oh! She’s trying to kill him. That’s fine. This is fine. His face is probably as red as his robe and judging by Lup’s grin she thinks this is hilarious. Whatever. Fuck it. Let’s go all in. He gently takes both of her hands, holds them together, and presses a kiss to the junction between them.

When he lifts his head he stares at her hands in his, unable to make eye contact. Why the  _ fuck _ did he just do that? Is he insane? She’s gonna think he’s insane, or laugh it off. He doesn’t know which is worse.

Biting the proverbial bullet, he lifts his head and looks at her. She’s staring at him again like before, eyes filled with determination and another unreadable emotion. She lifts her hands out of his grasp. Of course. This was weird and she thinks he’s weird and he should just leave before—

She’s kissing him. On the lips this time. Her hands moved to either side of his face and pulled him in, his hands falling to her knees on instinct. Oh. Wow. He kisses back, eyes falling closed. After too short a time, Lup breaks the kiss and leans back, staring at him with that determined something in her eyes still.

Then it melts away and she’s avoiding his gaze. “Um.”

“Um,” Barry parrots. He doesn’t know what to say either. His hands are still on her knees. Her hands are held near her chest, fingers curled into loose, nervous fists.

She looks to him again and opens her mouth to say something, but a loud voice interrupts her.

“Hey guys! Look what I found!” Magnus says as he enters, proudly brandishing his knife. On instinct, Barry backs up. Magnus notices his and Lup’s expressions and, with confusion, asks, “Am I interrupting something?”

“Uh, you found your knife? Where was it?” Lup says rather than answer the question. Barry sees a bit of darkness to her cheeks but says nothing. He’s probably blushing so hard he looks like a stop sign.

“Stuck in a tree,” Magnus says, laughing a little. “And not like in the branches or anything. It looked like someone threw it into a tree.”

Lup forces a small laugh of her own. “That’s wild, dude.”

“Isn’t it!? But uh, I just wanted to tell you guys so you didn’t worry. Bye!” And he’s gone as quickly as he left.

With the atmosphere thoroughly shattered, Barry and Lup look at each other awkwardly. “Um,” they say in unison, then laugh a little at that.

“Uh, here,” Barry says, grabbing the bottle of burn cream and handing it to her. “For your leg. And your, uh, your fingers.”

“Thanks,” Lup says. When she takes it their fingers brush and they both pretend to not notice it. She slips down from the table and starts making for the door, but walking slowly and backward. “I’ll uh, give this back when I’m done.”

“Mm-hm. You should reapply in uh, a few hours,” Barry says.

“Okay. Cool.” Lup nods. Then she… waves? And Barry waves back? “Bye,” Lup says, then bumps into the wall by the door, smiles sheepishly, and disappears down the hall. The door automatically slides shut behind her.

Barry sighs heavily, leaning against the table.  _ What the fuck was that? _ He just kissed her. He kissed Lup. The woman he’s been practically in love with for decades now. And they just ignored it. Or they’re avoiding it? Which should he be hoping for? Should he go after her and talk about it? Would that be weird? Or would pretending it didn’t happen be weirder?

Fuck. He needs to get himself together. He looks down and realizes he’s been throttling this washcloth like it owes him money. Okay. Okay.  _ Step one: clean the medbay. Step two: go to your room and scream into a pillow until you know you’ll be able to look Lup in the eye. _ Her warm, brown, soft eyes that look right into Barry’s soul and—

_ Focus! _

He cleans the medbay, putting away the materials and wiping down the exam table, just in case. Also to get his nerves out. He almost trips over the rolling chair twice so it doesn’t help much. But he notices something: Lup’s old wand, still in two pieces and still on the table. She’ll want that back.

Fuck, he’s gonna beat himself up if he doesn’t do this, huh?

Telling himself it’s just to give her property back and for  _ no other reason _ , Barry makes his way down to the hall of sleeping quarters to where Lup’s room is.

He knocks on the door and it slides open, but Barry is instead face to face with Taako. He looks as surprised to see Barry as Barry is seeing Taako. But Taako’s face morphs into a grin and he says, “Hey, Barold. What’s up?”

“Lup forgot her w-w… her wand,” Barry manages, holding out the halves for Taako to take.

Taako does that thing where he pretends to think on a matter even though he’s made up his mind. He taps a finger to his chin and hums. Then he points that finger at Barry and says, “Why don’t you give it to her.” He winks, he fucking  _ winks _ , then moves past him and into his own room.

Barry turns back to looking through Lup’s doorway at Lup herself. She looks like she’s been pacing. She does that when she’s nervous. Is she as stressed over this as Barry?

“Um, here’s your w-wand,” he says, holding it out to her. He’s still standing in the doorway. She crosses the room to take it from him, but she seems more focused on him. Their hands brushing is an afterthought.

“Thanks,” she says. While still keeping that eye contact, Lup places her broken wand on the dresser by the door. The third time they keep staring at each other. This time, he doesn’t break it.

“Barry?” she asks.

“Yes?”

“I, uh,” She breaks eye contact this time, nervously looking down before meeting his gaze again. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask permission before I kissed you.”

That takes him by surprise. “W-w-what?”

“I’m sorry, I kissed you without knowing if you would be cool with it. I mean, you kissed back so that probably means you were? But still, I’m not too sure and either way I shouldn’t have assumed anything that was rude of me and I—”

“Lup?”

She freezes. “Yes?”

“Can I kiss you?”

“…Yes.”

So he does. He steps forward, officially crossing the threshold of her room and meeting her lips with his. Her hands find his face again and— right, she still has bandages on. His own hands fall to her hips. Her shirt is a little rumpled and riding up so he touches bare skin and it’s  _ soft _ . So is the kiss, it’s soft and warm and perfect, just like Lup. This kiss is longer, less impulsive, more gravitational. They came crashing into each other and Barry’s heart exploded into a million tiny pieces.

But it ends, sadly, and Lup backs up just enough to look him in the eyes. “I’ve wanted to do that for such a long time.”

“Me too.”

“I never imagined having mummy hands when we did it though,” Lup says, giggling. Barry does too.

“I really don’t mind.”

“I do. I can barely feel your dumb, cute face.” She prods his cheeks with just the tips of her fingers for emphasis.

Barry moves a hand to cup her cheek. “Your face is cute too.”

She leans into the touch, her hand over his own. “Thanks.”

“Kinda wanna kiss it again, if I’m being honest.” Gods, it feels so good to be honest about this now.

“I wouldn’t mind that at all,” she says, moving steadily closer.

Barry moves closer too. Gravitational. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

They meet in the middle for another kiss. Barry feels like a shooting star and a firework and a blooming flower, but more importantly: he feels Lup. Her fingers on his face, her hips under his hands, her lips on his, her breath mixed with his.

It’s nothing short of heaven.

**Author's Note:**

> if you know more about injuries and medicine than me and noticed inaccuracies in this no you didn't ❤️
> 
> my tumblr is [@comradelup](https://comradelup.tumblr.com) and i take drabble requests! if you give me one it apparently might end up being a whole entire fic! only one way to find out how!
> 
> (kudos and comments also greatly appreciated and loved as always <3)


End file.
